The same information I've been getting all along.
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Browns Offered Jadeveon Clowney $12MM/Year?
June 2nd, 2020 at 1:13pm CST by Zach Links
Jadeveon Clowney recently
rejected an offer from the Browns, one that is rumored to be the most lucrative of any he’s received thus far. Still, it sounds like it was a far cry from the type of coin that Clowney has become accustomed to. The Browns’ proposal was believed to be worth around $12MM per year in base salary, agents tell
Jason La Canfora of CBSSports.com.
That’s the “word in the agent community,” per La Canfora. The full and true details of the offer are only known to Clowney’s representatives and those in the Browns’ front office. It’s also not immediately clear whether the Browns were offering a one-year deal or a multi-year arrangement. Either way, the Browns haven’t been totally turned off –
they’re reportedly still interested.
When Clowney was traded from the Texans, he made the Seahawks promise not to use the franchise tag on him for a second consecutive season. The Seahawks probably wouldn’t have given him a 20% bump over his ’19 salary, but as JLC notes, a one-year, $18MM tether for 2020 would have been preferable to his current situation. So far, the Browns offer is apparently the best Clowney has been able to scare up, and
the base compensation is about 25% less than Matthew Judon’s DE/LB hybrid tag for this year.
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NFL reality amid coronavirus: Players should sign now and hope for a better deal later
It's a bad time to be a free agent, and Jadeveon Clowney remains the face of this dilemma
by
Jason La Canfora
Jun 1, 2020 at 12:21 pm ET • 5 min read
The word throughout the agent community is that the reportedly "super lucrative" deal he turned down from the
Cleveland Browns would have been worth $12M at its base. That's a far cry from the over $20M a year Clowney initially wanted on a long-term deal. It's also well below the $16.8M franchise tag that fellow edge defender Matthew Judon just signed with the
Ravens last week. It's not even close, actually.
Agents and players have to be aware of the talent that is still on the street and the potential options
NFL teams have to add potentially-impactful cheap labor; in this league almost everyone can be replaced and the balance of power is sitting with owners. In the case of Judon, his representatives at SportsStars certainly surveyed that landscape when opting to advise their client to sign his tag.
"One-hundred percent," agent Brian Mackler, who represents Judon along with James Ivler and Jerard Roggio, told me last week. "We had two guys I thought were going to be tagged this year – D.J. Humphries, the left tackle for Arizona who was able to get deal done before the tag, and then Matt (Judon). And if you spoke to me back in February we'd have had a whole different talk.
"But we're in a different world now and I agree with you, Jason, there are a lot of good football players out there that are available, and the economics in the National Football League is probably going to change this year from what it's been in the past."
The cold reality is that if the Ravens had for any reason rescinded the tag – they were instead working out a compromise with Judon about whether he should be designated as a defensive end or linebacker for the purposes of the tag – he may have been forced to take a financial hit. Again, the Ravens are in
Super Bowl-or-bust mode and aren't in a mode to shed their best outside pass rusher, but had they pulled the tag, executives I spoke to estimated Judon perhaps was looking at an
$8-$10M payday. And that is the same range multiple execs I spoke to evaluated for Clowney, given the current state of affairs in the NFL.
Does Clowney end up getting more than the near $17M that Judon just secured? I tend to highly doubt it; maybe in the summer, if a top team loses an elite defender to injury. Otherwise, I believe the market has spoken.
LINK